Susan L. Blair, 35 (from the Sunday NYT)
Susan had a work-stopping, whats-that-noise kind of laugh. Whereever she'd worked, co-workers have asked her from time to time to pipe down. If she was telling a joke, forget it. The laugh and the joke together were just too much. For example, the day before the WTC attack, she interviewed a prospective hire for Aon, where she was a team leader. "She commented to a co-worker that the person had a fear of heights," her sister remembers. "She said to the co-worker, 'I'm thinking to myself that we're on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center; you might want to rethink this job."
Though some of her jokes were laced with sarcasm, they were never aimed as darks, Susan's sister said. In fact, she had a big heart. She was known to like getting laughs out of cranky tollbooth operators. Her sister said, "I would ask why she cared whether the guy smiled and she would say, 'I just do.' She thought life was too short to go around with our shields up." |
